Were children cared for in early modern English Society?

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Early modern English child rearing practices like wet-nursing, swaddling, prescriptive literature and apparent lack of parental emotional attachment has caused much discussion, regarding the care of children. Philippe Aries and Lawrence Stone used these ideas, amongst others, to suggest that parents did not care for their children. Their ideas have been challenged by a number of historians who argue that, through research of first hand accounts in diaries and official records, it is clear that children were cared for and even though these practices appear to our modern society as uncaring and cruel they were, in fact, carried out with the best of intentions.

Aries in Centuries of Childhood (1962) claimed that before medieval times the idea of a state of childhood was non-existent and parents were not aware of the need to treat them any differently to adults. He studied the depiction of children in paintings of the time and concluded that children were treated the same as adults because they were portrayed the same, with the same clothing and features. Aries, along with Lawrence Stone, argued that there was, however, a change in attitudes towards children during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when adults began to realise that children were emotionally different to them and as such needed protecting.

Although most people now saw that children were different to adults and as such needed to be treated differently, they believed that children needed guidance and instruction to be good. Much of the literature available for children at the time was in a prescriptive style and was usually in the form of moral tales, usually ending with a good death for the child in the tale. In the preface of James Janeway’s A Token for Children it states ‘are you willing to go to Hell to be burned...in the same condition as naughty children’ suggesting to the child that unless they behave as they are expected to they will certainly go and burn in Hell which would not give them a good death. According to today’s modern upbringing this type of literature may be viewed as abusive but in early modern England it could be claimed that it was a good example of how much children were cared for. It was of the highest importance to have a good death and to ensure that children were instructed in this (due to the high mortality rate) would be viewed as doing the right thing for your child.

Children themselves rarely left any records regarding their view of childhood, but we can look to the parents who kept diaries and wrote letters and journals. We are also able to look at other primary sources from this era: art, prescriptive literature and household handbooks to help us understand the attitude of the parents of this time. According to Sharpe (1993) ‘relationships within the early modern family were more loving, caring and ‘modern’ than a number of recent historians have claimed’. He suggests that the historians have failed to take into account, when disputing that children in this period were ...

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It could be argued that many parents did not care for their children, especially upper class children, because very soon after birth they were sent to the country to be wet nursed and kept swaddled for several months. However, swaddling a child was a practice that, according to historians, intended the child to be less physically appealing and therefore parents were unlikely to become emotionally attached to a child that, in all probability, might not survive past its first few years. Many historians view swaddling as neglect and abuse and Dr Cadogan (1748) in his writing on child care instructed mothers that the wet nurses were using swaddling for their own benefit to keep the child quiet and out of the way, when:

he is hung from a nail like a bundle of old clothes......the violently compressed chest not allowing the blood to circulate...the patient was believed to be tranquil because he did not have the strength to cry out.

but it could also be argued that they were, in their view, protecting the child, keeping the child out of danger. Swaddling a child also keeps it warm, secure and reduces the heart rate, thus they tend to sleep more enabling the nurses to continue with their work. So even though it may have benefited the wet nurses it can also be seen as beneficial to the child. Houlbrooke states in The English Family (1992) that swaddling was part of the customs passed down the generations and this practice was carried out to ‘maintain a womb-like environment for the newly born baby’. It could be seen from this explanation that children were cared for because they were being kept from the harshness of the world by mimicking the protectiveness of the mother’s womb

According to Stone (1990), swaddling started to become less used from the end of the seventeenth century and this, he believed, was a clear indication parents were beginning to care for children more. Stone suggests that parents did not swaddle their children to be cruel or harsh to them but because they genuinely thought it was better for the child than to allow their limbs to be free to grow deformed. It also ‘prevents.....from cuddling, hugging and caressing the child’ and Stone argues that this meant parents could not become emotionally attached to their children.

Wet nurses were usually only employed by the middle and upper classes. It was carried out for many reasons and according to historians not always for the best reasons. Houlbrooke (1992) suggests many upper class mothers believed it would ‘spoil their looks and make them age more rapidly’ which could indicate a lack of affection or care for the child and it was also believed to prevent pregnancy and according to Stone ‘Mary Woolstoncraft still thought that desire for sexual relations by the fathers was the main reason for survival of wet nursing’. Thus a clear indication that parents were not concerned for the welfare of the child but for their own selfish reasons. However, this was not always the case; many children were sent to the country to be wet nursed because their mothers were physically unable to feed their own children due to the strain of childbirth or illness and as breast feeding was seen as the best way to ensure a child survived wet nursing was the next best thing. It was also believed that the countryside was the healthiest place for the child to flourish as parents believed there was less risk to the child from disease and death and therefore they were making a responsible and caring choice for the child. Lawrence Stone (1990) believed that another reason for sending children to wet nurses was that the parents could not bear the pain of losing so many children at such a young age that they postponed becoming emotionally involved until it was evident they were likely to survive, sending them out to wet nurses was the easiest solution.

It could be argued that evidence of not caring for their children lies in the diaries of the early modern parents as children were often not referred to by name until they had reached an age whereby they were likely to survive. Lady Anne Clifford refers to her daughter as ‘Child’ until her fifth birthday on July 2nd 1619 when she refers to ‘my Lady Margaret was five years old’. Some historians argue that this is a sign that they did not care for their children but Houlbrooke (1992) believes that being emotionally detached was the only way that parents could maintain their own emotional stability and by not referring to them with names does not give them the individuality that may be required to become attached.

In today’s modern society, the practices carried out by early modern parents such as wet nursing, swaddling, reading frightening prescriptive literature and remaining emotionally detached from their children would be considered, at the very least neglectful, and possibly abusive. However, we cannot judge these traditions by our own standards. Early modern English parents carried out these traditions because it was the general belief that they were doing what was best for their children. They genuinely believed that swaddling was protecting their child and wet nursing was giving them the best chance of survival. They even considered that to be emotionally distanced from their child would make it easier if the child did not survive. All of this evidence does not give clear indications that children were not cared for but that the care they received was different to our modern views because their idea of children and childhood was different to that of ours today.

Bibliography

Houlbrooke, R. The English Family 1450-1700, Longman Group Ltd, 1992

Sharpe, J. A. Early Modern England: A Social History 1550-1760, Hodder Arnold, 1993

Stone, L. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, Penguin Books, 1990

Extract from Lady Anne Clifford’s Diary

(Accessed January 2005)